Chicken makes 25-mile trek on Land Rover spare wheel to Stonehaven

A chicken escaped from a farm in Kintore, Aberdeenshire, and traveled about 25 miles to Stonehaven on the spare wheel of a Land Rover, according to the farmer who owned the bird and witnesses who saw the journey unfold early Saturday morning.

The escape was spotted by Dave Jacobs, 58, a Stonehaven resident who was on his way to work at around 6 a.m. He initially assumed the bird belonged to a neighbor and tried to guide it into a coop when he encountered it along his route. After a few failed attempts to catch the bird, he allowed it to wander until social media chatter and a later call revealed the chicken’s true owner—a farmer nearly 25 miles away in Kintore.

Jacobs recounted that he observed the bird perched on the back of the vehicle, nestled near the spare wheel rather than on the roof, and he estimated the speed at which the chicken might have traveled. “I couldn’t believe that a chicken had travelled that far at the speed of 60 or 70 miles an hour on the back of a Land Rover because it was sitting on the spare wheel, not even on the roof,” he told reporters. The farmer who owned the bird later confirmed that the chicken had indeed hitched a ride on a friend’s Land Rover and managed to cling on for the entire trip. When the farmer learned the bird was missing, he alerted Jacobs and asked for help in reclaiming the animal.

With the aid of passersby, Jacobs managed to herd the chicken into a coop. He then posted a public appeal on social media, which eventually drew the farmer from Kintore into contact with him. The couple who live near Jacobs also checked their own menagerie and confirmed they were not missing any feathered friends. The cross-town connection between Stonehaven and Kintore ultimately resolved the mystery of the 25-mile ride, with the farmer in Kintore confirming that the missing chicken belonged to him and adding that a second bird was also unaccounted for at the farm.

The farmer explained that the bird may have simply enjoyed the ride, resting on the spare wheel as the Land Rover was driven around the farm or along country lanes. He noted that his poultry sometimes sit on the back of the vehicle and could hop on when it is in use, suggesting the escape was less of a calculated stunt and more of an opportunistic journey by a curious animal.

The incident, though entertaining for onlookers, underscores a wider pattern of roaming animals in rural Scotland. In a related phenomenon cited by local media, a missing dog named Rayne traveled hundreds of miles through the Scottish Highlands, prompting a large-scale search that relied on drones, thermal imaging, and a network of volunteers. Carrie Kemp, Rayne’s owner, rushed home from a family holiday in Ibiza after receiving news of the dog’s escape. She described long, exhausting nights in which the Missing Pets team in Perth and Kinross used infrared drones, bait trails, and live cameras to track the animal, which was found after 17 days on the run.

Kemp told reporters that the rescue effort involved volunteers who worked around the clock, with some sleeping in cars during shifts and others coordinating searches across rugged terrain. The dog’s return brought relief and gratitude to a community that had rallied to help, with Kemp recalling the moment she finally saw Rayne and the joy it brought to her children. The case highlighted how technology and community cooperation can converge to resolve even the most challenging pet dispersal scenarios in remote areas.

In another high-profile rural case that captured public attention, a springer spaniel named Merlin went missing from a front garden and prompted a large-scale search that drew on scent trails, volunteers, and local networks. Merlin was eventually found returning to the family’s driveway after a search effort that stretched across several hours and involved multiple sightings. While the two incidents differ in scale and duration, they illustrate the same core dynamic: rural communities rely on rapid information sharing, cooperative networks, and a mix of old-fashioned persistence and modern tools to recover roaming animals.

Experts say these episodes, while uncommon in timing and circumstances, reveal how animals adapt to open spaces and how humans respond when their routine environments are disrupted. For the owners involved, the relief after a successful reunion is immense, and the stories tend to spread quickly online as neighbors and passersby share updates and sympathies. In the Stonehaven case, the quick collaboration between a local resident, the farm operator in Kintore, and social media networks helped ensure the animal’s safe return and minimized any potential risk to the bird or to drivers on the rural roads.

As rural life continues to blend with digital communication and rapid information sharing, cases like these remind residents of the quirky, unpredictable moments that can arise when animals roam greater distances than expected. They also illustrate the value of community responsiveness in safeguarding household pets and farm animals alike, even when a simple ride in a spare wheel becomes a cross-county journey.